Although Tehran is still isolated from the West due to sanctions over it dubious nuclear aspirations, its regional sphere of control is growing in leaps and bounds.

At its epicenter is a crescent of military and political control that ranges from Gaza to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and now Yemen.

Palestine-Iran

Relations with Iran took off when the PLO supported the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran but received a boost during the second Intifada in 2000 when Arafat released Hamas and Islamic Jihadist prisoners who identified with Iran. Despite calls from PLO/Fatah leaders to Tehran to stop meddling in internal Palestinian politics, Iran’s influence grew stronger as Hamas’s power grew within Palestinian politics and once Hamas won the elections in 2006, Tehran became Palestine’s main sponsor. That sponsorship isn’t only financial since Tehran supplies Hamas with military support and knowledge.

US Secretary of State John Kerry gives a statement after a roundtable meeting of the global coalition to counter the Islamic State militant group at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Dec. 3, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Eric Vidal)

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Dec. 3 that “the net effect is positive” of reported Iranian strikes against Islamic State (IS) targets in Iraq.

Kerry emphasized that the United States and Iran are “not only not coordinating militarily right now, but there are no plans at this time to coordinate militarily.”

Arash Karami reported that Iranian officials have also brushed back talk of coordination, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkamstating that she would “not confirm news about cooperation on a military matter,” while an anonymous Iranian official denied the existence of strikes entirely to Reuters.

This column has suggested that a nuclear agreement with Iran would be a catalyst for more expansive cooperation in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the region. This seems to be happening, incrementally, even in the absence of an agreement.

As Laura Rozen reported from Vienna, the latest P5+1 talks in the city, before the signing of an extension, gave rise to “cautious optimism that more rapid progress might now be made toward a final accord.” This progress carried over into the seven-month extension that allows the International Atomic Energy Agency expanded access to Iranian facilities and sets limits on R&D for centrifuges, among other conditions.

Kerry, Rice: Syria buffer zone ‚premature‘

US National Security Adviser Susan Rice told The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council this week that a safe zone in Syria, as advocated by Turkey, is “at best premature” and that it “would be a major investment of resources that would be something frankly of a diversion from the primary task at hand.” Kerry similarly referred to a decision on a buffer zone or safe zone as “premature.”

Semih Idiz writes for Al-Monitor that Turkey is unlikely to change its Syria policies until the United States clarifies its position on President Bashar al-Assad, so the friction in US-Turkey ties is likely to continue.

Some clarification of US intentions would no doubt be helpful. The United States has called for Assad to „step aside“ since August 2011. It seems unhelpful, however, for the Barack Obama administration to frame its debate on whether US attacks on IS and terrorist groups in Syria indirectly support Assad — or by extension Iran — and that therefore the United States needs to go after both IS and Assad, intervening on two sides of a civil war. Welcome to the slippery slope.

Better to toss that line of thinking out altogether. Instead, the questions over a buffer zone or expanded investment in the Syrian opposition should be based on a cool-headed assessment of the balance of forces inside Syria, and framed as to whether the United States is prepared to take any action that would likely be opposed by the Security Council, would prolong the war and begin a formal division of the country. What would it mean for the campaign against IS? And would the United States be ready to take on the Syrian government directly, if the zone or opposition groups were challenged by Syrian government forces? And then what?

For those who cannot reach beyond the simplified view that a decision of such magnitude should be characterized as either “pro-Assad” or “anti-Assad,” rather than an analysis based upon US policy options and potential consequences, it is worth recalling that this column has supported aid to Syrian rebel forces in pursuit of a political settlement; called for the Syrian government’s accountability for war crimes; provided on-the-ground reporting by Syrian correspondents on the rise of discontent in Alawite regions; and, as early as August 2012, and to date, has offered diplomatic strategies for a post-Assad transition in Syria.

Is IS attacking Kobani from Turkey?

The Turkish daily Radikal, translated in Al-Monitor, reported this week on the alleged presence of IS fighters in Turkish villages near the Mursitpinar border crossing with Syria in operations against Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) forces:

“Those who constantly watch the border from Caykara insist that IS had attacked YPG from the rear by crossing the border from Turkey. For them, the lack of intervention by the Turkish military tasked with border security is a sign that Turkey prefers to have IS control the border crossing. But even more worrying are the allegations that IS people have been freely entering abandoned houses on the Turkish side. There is no need to elaborate what kind of security fears this causes in the region and how it amplifies the distrust felt for security forces. Contradictory statements by senior civil servants and their ignoring of eyewitness accounts only intensify people’s lack of confidence.”

The US Congress is giving more intensive scrutiny to Turkey’s policies toward foreign fighters operating in Syria. Julian Pecquet reports that during testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Robert Bradtke, the US Department of State’s senior adviser for partner engagement on Syria foreign fighters was “asked by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, whether Turkey was ‚complicit‘ in allowing fighters to cross its border into Syria; he said no.”

Russia diplomatic surge in Syria, Iran

While the United States has been preoccupied with its coalition effort against IS in Iraq and Syria, Russia has taken the lead in diplomacy toward a Syrian political settlement.

Vitaly Naumkin writes that Russia is looking to convene a preliminary conference on the future of Syria that would complement UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura’s plans for „freezing“ the conflict in Aleppo. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently met in Moscow with de Mistura, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem and former head of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces Moaz al-Khatib, along with other Syrian opposition figures, toward this effort.

Russian diplomacy has also been instrumental in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran. Rozen writes that the Russian envoy to the talks, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, “has managed to maintain a constructive working rapport with US and European counterparts at the Iran negotiating table, despite the deep strains plaguing Moscow-West relations over Ukraine.” She adds: “US and Western officials and experts say the prospective Russia-Iran energy deal may help resolve one of the toughest issues in the nuclear talks — the size of Iran’s enrichment capacity in a final deal — and they have recently gone out of their way to praise the Russian role in the sensitive nuclear negotiations as being highly constructive, professional and creative.”

Liberman sees ‘opportunity’ in regional crisis

Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, in an exclusive interview with Ben Caspit, said he will soon present to US and Western powers “a courageous peace plan with very painful concessions.”

Mazal Mualem reports that Liberman’s regional peace plan may be part of a bid to position himself among the contenders to replace Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister.

Liberman explained to Caspit why he felt that the time was right for a regional approach to the Palestinian issue: „This is the first time that the moderate Arab world understands and internalizes the fact that its real threat is not the Jews, not Zionism and not Israel, but the Muslim Brotherhood and Jabhat al-Nusra and Hamas and the Islamic State and al-Qaeda and all the terrorist factions of the different denominations over the generations. Therefore this is the first time that we can say to all these moderate countries, ‚Friends, we have a common enemy, let’s join hands and cooperate in the security realm as well as the economic realm.'“

Iraq’s Transportation Minister Hadi al-Amiri (2nd R), head of the Badr Organisation, visits members of the Iraqi security forces after clashes with militants from the Islamic State (IS) in the town of Dalli Abbas in Diyala province, June 26, 2014. (photo by REUTERS)

Since the collapse of the Iraqi military in Northern Iraq, allowing the Islamic State (IS) group to seize large swaths of territory in early June, the central government in Baghdad has relied in large part on various militias and volunteers to shore up its forces. One of these groups that has played a large role in liberating a number of towns from IS is the Badr Organization, headed by former Minister of Transportation Hadi al-Amiri.

Conservative website Mashregh News ran a profile of Amiri on Nov. 12. The glowing profile by Mashregh, which some believe has close connections to Iran’s security agencies, can be viewed as endorsement. The brief synopsis, in addition to Amiri’s activities against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, also read that Amiri has both Iraqi and Iranian citizenship and that his wife is Iranian.

It should be no surprise, then, that Amiri has a close personal relationship with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps‘ Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who has been working closely with Iraqi forcesin their fight against IS. The Mashregh profile shared a number of recent pictures of Amiri with Soleimani on the front line in Iraq.

In a Nov. 6 interview with Foreign Policy, Amiri called Soleimani a “friend, a good man, and good fighter.” One of the pictures shared by Mashregh shows the two men laughing, with Soleimani embracing Amiri. According to Mashregh, a number of these pictures were taken after the liberation of Amerli and Jurf al-Sakhar, two of the key victories by the Iraqi forces over IS militants.

The article also included an older picture of Amiri meeting personally with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. One of the more recent pictures of Amiri in Tehran was taken during a Muharram ceremony with Ayatollah Khamenei, showing Amiri sitting next to Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The picture was shared by a Twitter account associated with Iran’s supreme leader on Nov. 6.

Born in Diyala, Iraq, in 1954, Amiri eventually fled after he was issued a death sentence for his activities against the Iraqi government. He has lived in exile in Jordan, Syria and Iran. While in Iran, he commanded the Badr Brigades, which continued to fight Saddam. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam, Amiri returned to Iraq and entered politics.

The Mashregh article does not cover how Amiri became transportation minister in 2010 or the role of Badr Brigades in the early days of Iraq’s civil war.

Mashregh reported that once IS took over parts of Iraq, rather than a “propaganda” campaign like that of the United States and its allies, some groups in Iraq “really” mobilized and fought against IS. On June 10, while he was transportation minister, with prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s permission and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistan’s fatwa, Amiri donned his military uniform once again and headed to Diyala province north of Baghdad to fight IS. According to Mashregh, Ameri defended Diyala with a force 4,000 strong.

While Amiri does not hold a position in the new administration of Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, his Badr Organization currently holds 22 seats in Iraq’s parliament. His party also controls the Interior Ministry. According to Mashregh, Amiri was a lead candidate for defense minister but was eventually sidelined due to the pressure the United States and Saudi Arabia applied on Iraqi Sunni groups to oppose the appointment.

With a deadline for the Iranian nuclear negotiations set to expire in a few weeks and significant differences still outstanding, President Barack Obama reportedly penned a personal appeal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last month. The move betrays a profound misunderstanding of the Iranian leadership, and is likely to hinder rather than help achieve a durable resolution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions as well as other U.S. objectives on Iran.

If the reports are accurate — and the administration has not yet confirmed the scoop by the Wall Street Journal — the letter apparently urged Khamenei to finalize the nuclear deal and dangled the prospect of bilateral cooperation in fighting the Islamic State group (also known as ISIS or ISIL) as an incentive. It marks the fourth time since taking office in 2009 that Obama has reached out to Khamenei personally, in addition to his exchange of letters (and an unprecedented phone call) with the country’s president, Hassan Rouhani.

This constitutes a striking increase in American outreach to the Iranian leadership since the revolution. The two countries have not had direct diplomatic relations since April 1980, and have engaged in direct dialogue only sporadically since that time, most recently in concert with five other world powers in talks aimed at eliminating Iran’s path to nuclear weapons capability.

In dealing with one of the world’s most urgent crises, more direct dialogue is surely a net positive. But the technique and tactics matter, perhaps even more in this interaction than in most other disputes, where contact is more routinized and where there is a more substantial foundation of mutual understanding or at least familiarity. It makes perfect sense, for example, that the U.S. military has apparently utilized Iraqi officials as an intermediary on issues related to the ISIS campaign, which Tehran has waged independent of the U.S.-led effort through its proxies on the ground in Iraq.

However, it is precisely at the tactical level that an Obama letter to Khamenei at this juncture appears so spectacularly ill-conceived. First of all, it poses no realistic possibility of advancing progress in the nuclear talks or any other aspect of U.S.-Iranian relations. After all, only the most naïve and uninformed observer of Iran would believe that a personal appeal from Obama would sway the Supreme Leader in a positive fashion.

Khamenei’s mistrust and antipathy toward Washington has been a consistent feature of his public rhetoric through the 35-year history of the Islamic Republic. He has described Washington with every possible invective; he indulges in Holocaust denial and 9/11 conspiracies; and he routinely insists that the United States is bent on regime change in Iran and perpetuating the nuclear crisis. These views are not opportunistic or transient. Anti-Americanism is Khamenei’s bedrock, engrained in his worldview, and as such it is not susceptible to blandishments — particularly not from the very object of his loathing.

Moreover, the Islamic Republic’s leadership is steeped in a Hobbesian understanding of the international system; as a hardline newspaper wrote, „our world is not a fair one and everyone gets as much power as he can, not for his power of reason or the adaptation of his request to the international laws, but by his bullying…“ Interpreted in this context, Obama’s appeal to Iran’s highest power at this critical juncture in the nuclear diplomacy will surely be read as a supplication — and as further confirmation of American desperation and weakness in the face of Iran’s position of advantage.

This may sound absurd, given the relative disparity in the two countries’ capabilities and international influence. And by any objective standard, Iran has a more compelling interest in a swift resolution to the longstanding nuclear impasse, since a deal would begin to curtail the devastating sanctions that have halved Iran’s oil exports and stranded its earnings in foreign banks that are off-limits to the Iranian treasury.

But Tehran has long sought to convince itself and the world otherwise. Khamenei himself regularly revels in his conviction that America is on the retreat in the face of Iran’s superior power. As he explained recently „the reason why we are stronger is that [America] retreats step by step in all the arenas which we and the Americans have confronted each other. But we do not retreat. Rather, we move forward. This is a sign of our superiority over the Americans.“

In addition, the incentive that Obama apparently proffered in his latest correspondence — a willingness to explore the confluence of interest between Tehran and Washington on combatting Sunni extremists — offers very little prospect of meaningful traction. The simple reality is that neither side prioritizes the ISIS battle over the nuclear diplomacy, as evidenced by the fact that Iran’s diplomats sought to use the same implicit linkage to lure Washington into greater nuclear concessions. Meanwhile, Iran’s security establishment has categorically rejected speculation about direct cooperation with the U.S.-led campaign, preferring to pursue its own offensive and convinced (probably correctly) that Tehran and its proxies have the upper hand in both Iraq and Syria.

As a result, there is simply no plausible scenario in which a letter from the President of the United States to Ali Khamenei generates greater Iranian flexibility on the nuclear program, which the regime has paid an exorbitant price to preserve, or somehow pushes a final agreement across the finish line. Just the opposite — the letter undoubtedly intensified Khamenei’s contempt for Washington and reinforced his longstanding determination to extract maximalist concessions from the international community. It is a blow to the delicate end-game state of play in the nuclear talks at the precise moment when American resolve was needed most.

The revelation of the letter also undercuts Obama elsewhere. It deepens tensions with America’s regional allies, whose assistance in strengthening the Sunni opposition to ISIS is sorely needed. It also hurts him at home, and again at the worst possible time, given the mid-term elections‘ outcome and incoming Republicans majorities in both houses of Congress. Obama’s rivals on Capitol Hill were already planning an activist agenda on Iran that could disrupt the administration’s diplomatic efforts; the letter will be seen — wrongly — as confirming the right’s most ludicrous conspiracy theories about a covert American-Iranian alliance.

It is difficult to imagine the logic that inspired Obama’s latest missive, other than an utter ineptness in understanding Iranian political dynamics. However, it is consistent with prior mawkishness that the administration has demonstrated toward Iran’s leadership during Rouhani’s two visits to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meetings — an unseemly, artless pursuit of some personal affinity in hopes of advancing bilateral diplomacy.

Obama would hardly be the first American president to delude himself that he can overcome international conflicts through the force of his own charisma — recall, for example, President George W. Bush’s excruciating assertion that he had looked into the eyes of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and sensed his soul. But he might just be the first to fumble a crucial arms control agreement near the finish line out of a misguided overconfidence in the power of his own prose.

In many ways, the Obama Administration’s new strategy toward Iraq and Syria is a work in progress. Each week, new elements emerge or get added. And there are certainly a number of important aspects still missing. However, overall, what is emerging is a smart, coherent approach that is checking off any number of key military and diplomatic boxes. Of greatest importance, American actions in the region and Administration statements (particularly General Martin Dempsey’s testimony before the Senate last week) indicate that Washington is putting in place a comprehensive strategy meant not only to defeat ISIS, but to address the wider circumstances of Iraq and Syria. That is critical because ISIS and its ilk are not the problem in the region; they are the symptom of the problem. The problem is the intercommunal civil wars burning in both Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately, that’s also where the missing pieces of the strategy remain.

Intertwined Campaigns

At heart, the Administration’s approach is a dual strategy, coupling two similar but not identical approaches to the two countries. Although some of the Administration’s critics have demanded a single strategy toward both, the Administration’s approach is probably the right one. It reflects the reality that the two civil wars are different in many important ways and it is not possible to employ the same exact approach to both. Each needs a tailored version of the broad strategy. What they do require is close coordination, and it appears that the Administration is doing just that, at least for now.

In both countries, the Administration hopes to empower moderate forces—both Sunni andShi’a to the extent possible—to fight against all of the extremists, both Sunni and Shi’a. Indeed, to the extent that there is an overarching theme to the strategy, it is one of empowering moderate forces, an idea that ought to be applied more broadly across the Middle East.

In Iraq, the Administration is essentially building on the progress made in 2007-2010 to try to resurrect the power-sharing arrangement forged by the United States as part of the Surge and recreate a unified Iraqi government. While that government may only be united in name, the willingness of Sunni, Shi’a and perhaps Kurdish leaders to cooperate under that rubric should allow the U.S. to move forward militarily against ISIS and its allies while helping the Iraqis to sort out the final shape of a new Iraqi political system. In Syria, in contrast, the focus is on building a new Syrian opposition army, one that can defeat both the Asad regime and the Sunni radicals like ISIS, and then use its military successes to create the political incentives for a new national reconciliation/power-sharing agreement as the 1995 Dayton Accords did for Bosnia.

Indeed, to the extent that there is an overarching theme to the strategy, it is one of empowering moderate forces, an idea that ought to be applied more broadly across the Middle East.

These interwoven strategies toward Iraq and Syria have some critical advantages. Both are reasonable, feasible and historically well-grounded. If successful, both would produce end-states consistent with American interests. Moreover, both can be consistent with the interests of America’s allies in the region, hence the publicly-enthusiastic if privately-tepid reception from many of America’s Middle Eastern allies to the new strategy. Nevertheless, both have important challenges to overcome as well.

The Military Campaigns

In both Syria and Iraq, the American strategy is in the first phase of its military campaign. Since Washington is determined not to deploy American ground combat troops—or, rightly, to rely on those of other neighboring states—it must build indigenous ground forces. Air power alone, even American air power, is unlikely to be adequate to drive ISIS, other Sunni militant groups, or the Asad regime’s military forces from the territory they control. Coalition airstrikes will need complementary ground forces of some kind to fix enemy ground forces and occupy terrain, particularly population centers. However, as General Dempsey and others have noted, it will take months before such ground forces are ready.

It is worth noting that these ground forces do not have to be first-rate. They simply need to be good enough that, with the addition of American air power, they can defeat both Asad’s forces and those of ISIS and the other Sunni militants. That isn’t a very high standard. In its grandest moments, the Syrian armed forces never rose beyond a rigid mediocrity, and while ISIS has certainly shown both some strategic acumen and tactical ability, it faces both quantitative and qualitative problems of its own. By comparison, in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance could not defeat the Taliban until 2001 when it was backed by U.S. air power, and the Libyan opposition was a joke in 2001, but it defeated the remnants of Qadhafi’s military with NATO air support ten years later. Thus, the historical record demonstrates that indigenous ground forces too week to win without American air support can win handily with it.[1]

American and other Western governments have just begun the long process of building Iraqi and Syria ground forces. Again, in both cases, the approach the U.S. will take is now clear, but there are a number of potential hurdles that have not yet been addressed. For instance, in Iraq the Administration has reconciled itself to the need to build, in effect, two separate militaries: a revamped Shi’a-dominated Iraqi Army and a new Sunni national guard. It remains to be seen how those forces will be able to work together. In particular, the Sunnis will not want any (Shi’a) Iraqi Army units operating in the Sunni-dominated provinces, and the Shi’a are likely to insist that they do so. That speaks to a second-order problem, which is that the conduct of the military campaign will be seen by both communities as setting precedents for the eventual reform of Iraqi politics, which is likely to make them dig in their heels even harder over these military considerations.

In Syria there are different but equally challenging issues. The first among them being whether the U.S. is going to simply try to train, arm and unify the existing hodge-podge of militias, or will create a wholly new, homogeneous Syrian opposition army. The former would be faster and easier, but the result would have very limited utility. Indeed, it might be of no use whatsoever. The latter would be far more militarily effective and politically helpful, but would take much more time and effort. While General Dempsey’s testimony suggested that the United States planned to take the latter approach (which I consider the better course by far) the matter does not appear settled at this point.[2]

A huge, unanswered question on the military side in Syria is whether (or when) the air campaign will expand beyond ISIS and the Sunni militants to begin targeting the Asad regime’s forces as well.

In the meantime, as these ground forces are readied, the air campaign will roll on. The strikes we have seen to date in Iraq and Syria give a good indication of what that air campaign will look like. It will be a unified campaign, striking targets in both Iraq and Syria ore or less simultaneously. (In that sense, it is the one piece of the strategy that will be truly unified). Moreover, it will have two primary target sets. The first will be terrorist targets. Anytime the U.S. identifies groups interested in striking the U.S. or its allies, it will get hit. The “Khorasan Group” of Jabhat al-Nusra falls into this category, but so too would ISIS operatives planning terrorist operations.

The second will be a more conventional air interdiction campaign that will seek to attrite and disrupt enemy forces whenever they are vulnerable. That will include command and control facilities (and personnel), logistical infrastructure, training facilities, barracks, motor pools, economic targets like the oil fields hit this week, transportation assets, and field-deployed combat forces whenever the Coalition receives actionable intelligence on such targets. That last is an important point: given how much time it will take for the ground forces to be readied, the air campaign is likely to focus on targets of opportunity, striking enemy assets whenever they are vulnerable, whatever and wherever they may be.

Good analogies of this part of the strategy would be the air campaigns against Iraqi forces in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations during the first 39-days of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, or the Allied air campaign against German targets in France during the build-up to D-Day in 1944. In both cases, the United States and its allies spent weeks/months working over the enemy’s forces, killing combat forces when available, but otherwise relentlessly busting up logistical facilities, transport assets (trucks, trains, cars, etc.), leadership targets, communications systems, and chokepoints (like bridges and overpasses). In both cases, these constant attacks wore down the enemy to the point where when the ground forces finally attacked, they had been considerably weakened.

A huge, unanswered question on the military side in Syria is whether (or when) the air campaign will expand beyond ISIS and the Sunni militants to begin targeting the Asad regime’s forces as well. That is a necessary component of the strategy that the Administration has laid out, and it is not something that needs to start right away. But it will have to happen at some point, and well before the new Syrian opposition forces are ready to take the field to ensure that they can succeed when they do so. But going after the regime’s forces will mean both a much bigger military operations, since it will have to first neutralize the regime’s residual air defense network, and a much bigger diplomatic and political fight since Russia and Iran will protest loudly and may try to increase their support to Syria—or even cause trouble for the U.S. elsewhere.

Political-Military Tensions

It is also important to note that there are likely to be significant tensions between military best practices and immediate political needs. In an ideal world, the Coalition would spend a year or more doing nothing but training the relevant Iraqi and Syrian ground forces, while the air campaign slowly wears down ISIS, other militant groups, and potentially the Asad regime as well. We would only unleash those ground forces (with U.S. air support) when they were completely ready to go both quantitatively and qualitatively. Again, D-Day or Operation Desert Storm are good historical analogies.However, the political reality is that American, European, Arab, Iraqi and Syrian opposition leaders will all be under pressure to demonstrate that they are taking action and not simply giving their adversaries a free hand to consolidate power over the territory they control. All will want ground operations to start as soon as possible, and they will likely press the military commanders to mount limited operations as soon as the first ground forces are ready—or close to it. The old phrase “close enough for government work” comes readily to mind. The danger in that is if these limited operations are unsuccessful and the first of the newly-trained ground forces are defeated, it could demoralize the rest of the force, set-back the broader training programs, and exacerbate the inevitable political-infighting that attends any military coalition. (The failure of the Dieppe raid in 1942 is a good historical example illustrating these issues.)

Political Challenges

The military dimensions of the strategy are increasingly clear, and the challenges they face are not insignificant, but relatively straightforward. On the political side, the situation is far more murky.

First off there are the problems likely to attend the international effort. Americans always prefer to fight as part of a coalition, and in this case, some of the countries that Washington is working on have important—even unique—assets that they bring to this particular fight. The problem is that the countries that are most enthusiastic about the fight, namely the Europeans, have the least to contribute. Whereas, those with the most to contribute, the Sunni Arab states and Turkey, are the least enthusiastic about the American strategy. Certainly, the European states can and already have contributed some small military forces and they may also be helpful with limited reconstruction funding, but that’s about the extent of it. And ultimately, the United States does not need European aircraft, at least not militarily. While European financial contributions will either be inadequate or irrelevant depending on whether the Gulf Arab states make good on their pledges to shoulder the vast bulk of the costs for Syria.

For the Sunni states of the Middle East, the problem is complicated. They all do hate and fear ISIS. But they also hate and fear the Shi’a and Iran even more. Most believe that Iraq and Syria are simply two fronts in a much bigger, more important Sunni-Shi’a struggle for the soul of the Muslim Umma. What’s more, many of the Arab Sunni states—including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan—fear the moderate Sunni Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood more than they fear the Salafi extremists of ISIS. In Syria, these differences are less of a hassle because Washington’s new strategy is about defeating both ISIS and the (the Iranian-backed and predominantly-Shi’a) Asad regime. However, in Iraq, the Administration hopes to empower both moderate Sunni forces, which may include Brotherhood elements, and the (Iranian-backed and predominantly-Shi’a) government against ISIS and its allies. That is not terribly comfortable for the Sunni states, and an important reason why they have been far more supportive of the Syria half of the strategy than the Iraq half. In the future, it may be possible to convince them that even in Iraq the approach will not simply empower their worst enemies at the expense of lesser enemies, but it will take some doing.

The military dimensions of the strategy are increasingly clear, and the challenges they face are not insignificant, but relatively straightforward. On the political side, the situation is far more murky.

In Iraq, the new cabinet is an important step forward, but it is only a very small step. Iraqis still need to sort out the new shape of their political system. The Sunnis are determined to see a fully-articulated federal structure emerge, one in which the majority-Sunni provinces have enormous autonomy, including control of their own military forces as the Kurds already do. Some Shi’a recognize that there will need to be change, but many want a return to the status quo ante, with a strong central government and limited federal powers—essentially the Maliki era without Maliki’s excesses. Not only will it be difficult to reconcile these competing perspectives, but these differences will play out right from the start in virtually every military, political, or economic decision that the new Iraqi government makes. Both sides will be constantly weighing any move to assess which side it advantages in that ultimate fight, and that is likely to hamstring the fight against ISIS at every turn.

With Syria, the weakness of the political element of the strategy is even more pronounced. Simply put, the United States will have to lead an effort of nation-building to heal the wounds of the civil war. It is unavoidable. President Obama himself recognized this reality in his interview with Tom Friedman of The New York Times in August. There he observed that a lesson he learned from Libya in 2011 was that military intervention that was not backed by a major effort to build a functional state afterwards would simply lead to chaos and a new set of threats to American interests. In the interview, the President implied that this recognition was one reason that he did not want to intervene in Syria because he was not ready to commit to such a program there. Now, having committed the United States to just such an intervention, he cannot escape the logic of his own contention. But neither the United States nor any of its allies appear to have given any thought to what post conflict reconstruction in Syria would entail, let alone begun to plan and prepare for that effort.[3] That could be the largest and most difficult aspect of the entire strategy.

The Big Picture

Despite all of the challenges the new U.S. strategy toward Iraq and Syria faces, it should not be seen as hopeless. The new strategy is entirely feasible, the challenges identified could all be addressed (and have been, in other efforts elsewhere in the past), and the primary variable is the extent of the American commitment. Of equal importance, there is no other alternative strategy that has a higher likelihood of succeeding.

Articulating all of the challenges this strategy faces, including those that the Administration simply has not addressed yet, should not be seen as suggesting that its proposed course of action is foolish. It is not. However, it is heavily dependent on their willingness to properly implement and resource it.

[1] Of course, that does not mean that it always works. Kosovo in 1999 is an important contrary example. There, U.S. air power, weaponry and advisors were not sufficient to enable the Kosovo Liberation Army to defeat the Serbs. That said, the Serbs were far more powerful than either the Asad regime’s residual armed forces or ISIS and its allies.

[2] For those interested in a more extensive explanation of how (and why) the United States should build a new Syrian opposition Army as the Administration has indicated it will, see Kenneth M. Pollack, “An Army to Defeat Assad: How to Turn Syria’s Opposition Into a Real Fighting Force,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 5 (September/October 2014), pp. 110-124.

Kenneth M. Pollack is an expert on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, with particular emphasis on Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the other nations of the Persian Gulf region. He is currently a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He served as the director of the Center from 2009 to 2012, and its director of research from 2002 to 2009. His most recent book is Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy.